


Escape for the Night

by sharlatanka



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, Little Lambert has the general vibe of a baby raccoon, No male bonding without violence I guess, Young Witchers (The Witcher)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27584965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharlatanka/pseuds/sharlatanka
Summary: The night of Eskel's first kiss is also the day he got his first scar, and then some. Lambert takes risks to incriminate his bullies, but more terrible hatreds lie among villages of so-called normal people, those same people whom he desperately wanted to save him from the abuses of Kaer Morhen.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 34





	Escape for the Night

“Why can’t I come with you?” He chased them out of the room and into the hallway. Their strides were longer; they were taller. They had already gone through the trials and the mutations. Now they were allowed to leave on adventures. Lambert wasn’t ever allowed to go anywhere. 

“Because you’re too young. And you’ve already tried to escape twice,” Geralt told him. The first time he scaled one of the walls. The second time he slid under the cart of a grain merchant as he was entering through the doors of the fortress and bolted from there down the road. Vesemir had moved his bed after that to Geralt and Eskel’s room, so that the teens could keep an eye on him. The reflexes and speed he’d demonstrated during his escape attempts ensured he’d make a great witcher and would likely survive the trials; there was no use letting him get attached to other ill-fated children in his cohort, anyway. “Vesemir says you can’t get out again.”

“Besides,” Eskel shoved him away by the head with his large hand. “We’re not going out to play games for little kids.” The mutations only seemed to double his normal growth spurt. Lambert slammed into the wall but got up quick. He ran between their legs again, nearly unbalancing Geralt’s lanky frame. 

“Are you going to fight monsters?” 

“Sure.” Geralt snorted. Eskel laughed. Lambert fumed over the secret they shared with each other and not with him. 

“Hopefully we’ll slay  _ something, _ ” Eskel added, and Geralt laughed. Lambert wanted to laugh, too. 

Their swords were slung over their backs, but that was all. “Why aren’t you wearing any armor?” Lambert asked. “I’ll tell Vesemir you’re breaking protocol!” 

Geralt clicked his tongue at the novice. They stepped out into the warm late-summer night air. “Like you’d ever tell Vesemir anything. Now, get lost!” 

The heavy door swung into Lambert’s face and knocked him backwards. Geralt was right; he’d rather be picked apart by a griffon than volunteer any information to Vesemir. If he knew Eskel and Geralt were out past curfew, it meant he had been, too. He’d taken enough beatings for the week, knelt for enough hours on rocks for talking back. Lambert wasn’t interested in any more. Now that he lived with the older boys, he thought, he was one of them, too. It wasn’t fair that they went out without him. 

And because they went out without him, he realized slowly, no one was guarding him. Escape was possible again. He wandered around the front foyer of Kaer Morhen to find something to help him force open the heavy wooden door, thinking in the meantime about how much better life would be if he could somehow worm his way into a new family in the nearest village, with a mother and father who were kind, and didn’t drink. With a sister, maybe. He’d had enough of brothers for a lifetime. Another family would want him, most definitely. When he told them about what they do to boys up at Kaer Morhen, they would be appalled. 

He stumbled into a wooden combat dummy that had been brought back inside and carelessly placed near the door after it had rained the day before. He was still small, only nine years old, but if he stood on a chair and pushed, he could tip the dummy into the door. He did just that-- stepping carefully and quietly on a chair that he dragged noisily towards the door, he took hold of the stiff pole arms of the dummy and pushed. It fell hard onto the door with a resounding thud. Its arms made constant noise as they scratched down the length of the door while the door itself creaked open. The dummy finally fell to the floor in between the double doors, jamming one open by a few feet-- enough to sneak out of. He stood as quietly as he could for a moment to make sure he could still hear Vesemir’s horrible snoring. It was just as loud as ever. He hopped from the chair onto the dummy, and from there, outside to the courtyard. He kicked the wooden dummy back into the fortress, and the door closed behind him. No going back, now. 

Lambert hopped down the steps and followed the voices of his two roommates. Easy to spot-- they’d just become deeper and uneven. It had been one more thing he’d made fun of them for, until he realized that the vocal drop came with an increase in bullying. They disappeared down a wooded trail, but Lambert had caught up to them at a safe distance when they stopped to spar each other with the heaviest tree branches they could pull down. It turned into a race, which, against Geralt, Eskel couldn’t win. Lambert was lucky they still found their sharpened senses unwieldy and overwhelming; if they had any skill at all besides fighting each other, they would have noticed him following them by then. 

The end of the trail opened up to a smattering of torches and the voices of many other people. The small village at the foot of the hills had come alive that night for some end-of-summer festival. Lambert narrowed his eyes. Why would there be monsters there? Did they know something he didn’t? He scrambled up a nearby tree until he could get a good overhead view. If there was going to be a monster about, he’d see it first, and he’d warn them. Or not-- that would teach them not to bully him. 

He watched them elbow their way through the crowd straight towards a tray of shot glasses, from which they both picked up one, raised them one to the other, blew a puff of air over their shoulders, and drank it. At first Lambert assumed it was some arcane protection ritual, but no; he’d watched his own father do the same countless times, and Vesemir. They took another, and strolled towards a group of girls with hair full of flowers. Geralt pulled a flower for himself and slid it behind his ear. The girls pointed curiously to his unnatural hair color. While Geralt and Eskel brandished what visible muscles they had from combat training and hard living, the girls giggled and whispered amongst themselves.  _ Those fuckers,  _ Lambert thought, using a word he’d learned recently,  _ they came for the party, not to fight monsters. _ “Assholes…!” He whispered the word, which he’d also learned only recently, to himself under his breath. 

They let the girls hold their silver swords, and made a game of play-fencing with them, if only for an excuse to catch them off guard and catch them before they fell. As the night grew longer, the girls got closer, pawing at Geralt and Eskel’s faces to get a better look at their eyes. Eskel managed to sneak a kiss from one of them, and she pulled him away to the bushes. The other girls played with Geralt’s hair and fretted over his thin frame with sweets and braided flowers into his hair. Lambert grimaced in the dark. They were having a party with girls and they didn’t invite him. They did it on purpose.  _ He _ wanted girls to put flowers in his hair and feed him candies. He didn’t know what Eskel and that girl were doing in the bushes, but  _ he _ deserved to do it, too. 

Lambert had been sitting there for what felt like hours in that tree, stewing in his own resentment (a practice he’d continue into adulthood). He had forgotten about escaping; now, it was about collecting incriminating evidence. He would snitch to Vesemir just this once, and never again. That would teach them. If they weren’t going to invite him along to village parties, then they would never have one again. His ears caught some commotion from the other side of the village clearing. A group of men were drinking from bottles and speaking closely with one another. They were staring at Geralt and the girls. He watched one of the men point at his eyes, then he spat on the ground. They continued to drink, and mutter, and crack their knuckles, until the girl with Eskel ran out of the bushes screaming. Her dress had caught on fire. Eskel ran out after her, apologizing, shouting about putting the fire out, but she couldn’t hear him. He tripped as he struggled to pull his breeches back up over his hips, and another at the party tossed water from the horse trough all over the front of her dress. She wailed to the group of grumbling men. They advanced on geralt and Eskel. Geralt managed to jump to his feet, and scramble for his sword, but it was knocked out of his hands onto the ground. One of the men stepped on it and pulled up on the hilt; the sword bent, and Lambert remembered something Vesemir once said that had actually stuck:  _ While silver can take down a wight, a wraith, or a basilisk, it’s no match for your average human with enough strength to dent it. It’s nearly as soft as gold, but to you all, even more valuable.  _

There were about eight men gathering around Geralt and Eskel. All the girls had rallied behind them and the poor girl with her charred dress was now covered in about fifty percent horse slobber. Lambert wanted to laugh, but he found his throat dry. His knuckles were white on the tree branches. He was afraid. He couldn’t even call out to them. Three men grappled for Geralt’s shirt, ripped at his hair. They got in a kick or two, but Geralt slipped out of his shirt and jumped away. He was shouting at Eskel to run, but it was too late. One of the men had Eskel by the hair, three were contorting his arms in painful directions. More of them chased after Geralt. He hesitated, looking after Eskel, still struggling wildly and kicking out at the men; and to his sword, pitifully twisted in the dirt; and to the trail back to Kaer Morhen behind him. A well-hurled rock made the decision for him. It landed on his forehead with a resounding crack and knocked him to the ground. He called after Eskel one more time before scrambling his way back up the trail to safety. 

The group of men made do with Just Eskel. His nose was crushed in by the butt of a bottle. A fist swung out from the crowd and caught him square in the gut. He sank to the ground. What followed was a series of hurled insults, thrown bottles, stomps, and kicks. Occasionally one of the men would drag him to his feet only to punch him again. The girls that had just that night been showering the boys with compliments and giggling at their antics were shrieking like harpies and encouraging the men.

_Freaks!_ They shouted. _Animals! Degenerates!_ _Monster-blooded scum!_

They weren’t the kind people that the young witcher imagined would accept him unquestioningly into their families after his escape. Maybe, he wondered grimly, such a family didn’t exist. Lambert couldn’t watch it all unfold. At one point, he pressed his forehead to the tree trunk with such fear and shame that he wished he could meld into it and disappear. As Lambert knew happened with abusive drunks, one by one the men got bored and slunk off to their homes where their wives would avoid the same fists by telling them how brave and masculine it was that they had disfigured a fifteen year old. He kept his face pressed to the tree until he heard the sound of silence, and a low, almost imperceptible wail. 

Eskel was crying. Lambert peeled his face away from the tree, his cheeks still imprinted with the pattern of the bark. The older boy was alone, clutching his side and dragging himself towards the opening of the trail. His face was a dark mess of red. With each sob, blood and saliva poured from his mouth. “Geralt…! Geralt...” He sobbed into the dark. And then, strangely to Lambert, he called out for Vesemir. When he was sure all was quiet save for Eskel, Lambert watched Geralt descend from another tree at the other end of the clearing and throw his brother’s arm over his shoulder. Eskel’s boots dragged over the ground; Geralt’s thin body was bent to support his weight. He begged Eskel to keep talking. He begged Eskel to forgive him. Before they disappeared onto the trail, Lambert swore he could see Eskel eyes recognizing him in the tree under his bloodied forehead. Then his head rolled limply over his shoulders and out of sight. 

Lambert stayed in the tree for what seemed like one more hour in case there were any other bloodthirsty villagers about, and Lambert climbed down from the tree. He slunk silently across the village clearing over pools of blood, piss, and beer. He picked up Geralt’s bent sword, and stepped into the bushes for Eskel’s sword, still sheathed, and a curious piece of delicate fabric, slightly charred, that he supposed belonged to Eskel as well. He stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket and marched with the swords dutifully in their footsteps back to Kaer Morhen. He wouldn’t be escaping tonight, not to this village. not to these people. 

When he returned, Vesemir was already up and shouting. Most of the other boys had been roused from sleep by the argument and were peeking around corners to engage in some midnight schadenfreude. It was audible through the doors, which, in the boys’ haste to return, were slightly ajar. Lambert slipped inside quietly and stepped around the berating. 

“It was  _ my  _ idea, not his--”

“ _ What the devil does it matter whose idea it was!  _ You’d better be more worried about the fact that you left him there over what I’m going to think to do to make sure this  _ never  _ happens again!” 

“It was just a festival! We just wanted to take part…!”

“But you  _ aren’t  _ a part of that village. You aren’t a part of that world, not since you came here.  _ Idiots!” _

“And I didn’t leave him-- I-I went back for him. Just like you always say, I went back for him!” 

The back of Vesemir’s hand came down hard on the side of Geralt’s face that had caught the sharp rock only a few hours previous. Geralt buried his face in his hands; his body crumpled in on itself in despair. Vesemir didn’t react; he was angry as ever. “If you had stood by him like you should have, you’d have taken half of those blows. Everytime you look at him after this, and see what those cretins did to his nose and the rest of his skull, remember that you let it happen. You chose to run. Be glad he’s alive-- the next time you decide to run it’ll be the end of your life, or someone else’s.”

Lambert’s boots scuffed against the stone floor. Vesemir’s neck twisted towards the sound immediately. “ _ Gods damn it all-- _ You  _ hot-shot bastards _ left your swords! And this one _ \--!”  _ he ripped Geralt’s sword from Lambert’s arms. He was so incensed by the damage to the sword that he didn’t even register the hands that held it. For the moment, Lambert and his evening escapade were of no consequence to Vesemir, invisible. He inched his way into his room with Eskel’s sword while Vesemir continued to shout, further denting the sword on the wall before shoving it back into Geralt’s hands and saddling him with the responsibility of hammering it back to pristine condition. From the other side of the door Lambert heard Vesemir’s heavy footfalls grow distant. Geralt slid to the floor, dejected, and remained in the hallway. 

Lambert jumped when he heard Eskel breathe from the bottom bunk of their bed. It was a strained rattle, a gurgle, like he was half-drowning. Vesemir had cleaned him up to the best of his ability, but his face was still nearly unrecognizable. It was mottled with bruises, and swollen. Lacerations from broken bottles peppered his head and arms. His nose looked as if it had been ripped off by a troll and haphazardly put back on again. Lambert slunk closer to get a better look, like he was looking into a coffin at a wake. 

“Don’t stare at me… fucker.” Eskel croaked. Lambert jumped like he’d seen a ghost. “Looks bad… don’t it?”

Lambert grimaced and swallowed the truth in one hard gulp, shaking his head fervently from side to side.

“You were… in the tree.”

He nodded wordlessly. 

“Told you not to…” He coughed. Light red spittle dripped down the side of his mouth. He wiped it away with a weak hand. “...Told you not to follow us... Twerp.”

“Does it hurt?”

“What do  _ you _ think… Been worse...” 

Lambert slid the sword onto the blankets over Eskel’s stomach. Eskel gripped it sightlessly, swollen eyes toward the ceiling. “I brought back your sword.” 

“Why…?”

Lambert flared his nostrils, heart suddenly afire at what he felt had been his accomplishment and Geralt’s failure. “I’m not supposed to leave my brother behind.”

“Ah...huh…” 

“And I found your, uh, thing--” He pulled the burned scrap of fabric from his pocket and held it over Eskel’s head so that he could see. Eskel suddenly sputtered and coughed, and sat up to spit something vile into a bucket at the side of the bed before he choked on it. Lambert registered after the fact that he must have been laughing-- he smiled, and Lambert noticed that one of his back teeth had gone missing. Eskel crumpled the fabric in his hands for a moment. “Not mine…” He clarified. “Belonged to the girl. Underwear.”

Lambert made a face. 

Eskel thrust the bundle back into Lambert’s hands. “Take it… It’s yours, now. As a… thanks, for the sword.” 

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“What do I care…? You’ll get older… and you’ll be glad that you have it...” He did another sputtering laugh again. He wiped the spittle from his face with a linen cloth. 

Unwilling to keep holding it in his hands, he stuffed it back into the pocket of his jacket. He pulled himself up to sit on the end of Eskel’s bed. 

“What happened? With the girl and the fire?”

“Igni… Igni happened.” 

“Oh.” 

They sat in silence. Lambert swung his shins from side to side off the edge of the bed and listened to Eskel’s death rattle breathing and Geralt’s stoic sniffling from outside. He had naively thought the trials made one totally invincible.

“Eskel…?” Lambert murmured. 

“Hn…?”

“There’s nowhere to escape to from here, is there?”

Eskel turned his head towards the wall. “No…” He rasped. “Not even… for one night…” 


End file.
